Summary

An on-and-off archetype in Legacy, Pox combines kill spells, land destruction, and hand disruption to gradually squeeze the opponent out of the game. The archetype has been all but absent from Modern, essentially being replaced by the slower and more hand-focused 8-Rack deck. However, shifts in the metagame may have opened the door for Pox to make a name for itself in the diverse landscape of Modern.

The namesake card, Smallpox, is the most important card in the deck and it perfectly represents the strategy the deck is looking to explore, as it attacks the opponent’s hand, board presence, and manabase. The rest of the deck looks to compliment Smallpox‘s points of attack. Flagstones of Trokair is one of the oddest cards in the entirety of Modern, and it really only sees play in this deck, as it effectively make Smallpox‘s land destruction clause one-sided, which can frequently be make or break.

The sideboard of this deck indicates very well what this deck struggles with. The full playset of Leyline of Sanctity is needed to combat burn and some combo decks. Fulminator Mage helps further with land destruction against decks like Tron, Damnation helps in aggro matchups that can frequently run Pox over, and Stony Silence and Surgical Extraction are included for Affinity and Dredge, which are two ugly matchups for Pox.